


from the flesh

by Catsby



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dream Sex, Fear, Gore, Hannibal AU, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Outdoor Sex, Sleepwalking, Wendigo Suh Youngho | Johnny, monster fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27318649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsby/pseuds/Catsby
Summary: Tonight, there’s a dead woman on the river’s edge, and Mark finds himself face to face with her killer.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 22
Kudos: 165





	from the flesh

**Author's Note:**

> hello !!
> 
> this is sort of a sneak peek? or first part? of my johnmark hannibal au (to the bone) that i've been planning for about the past year!
> 
> please, please, PLEASE double check the tags to make sure you are okay with reading it because this fic is VERY dark and gross, PLEASE be careful

Mark's heard the forest-song.

Three years of living amongst the choir, he knows the tones by heart.

He knows how, in the deepest hours of night, the trees wail and stretch boney limbs to the moon like a lover lost. He knows how their roots vibrate beneath fertile dirt, shaking the underbrush like a rattlesnake’s tail. He knows how the wind whistles a macabre tune, as if screaming hushed of what awaits him and any others who wander behind the curtain of ancient wood to chase that song.

Tonight, there’s a dead woman on the river’s edge.

Mark finds her suddenly, startled from his dreamstate when a tooth embedded in the mud stabs a gnarled point into his heel. He looks then, truly _looks,_ and that's when he sees her, splayed on her back, her arms spread to welcome the sky and stars, what’s left of her jaw hanging open in a cruel mockery of a sickly grin.

The sight brings him pause, and then he checks his wristwatch; it’s just past 3AM. Either she was left here for him, or he was guided to her, drawn from his bed by nature’s whispers to drift barefoot through mud and life. He doesn’t know which is worse.

Stepping cautious to avoid more ivory stones, he ventures a tad closer, taking in the scene as the wind parts the canopies to let the moon lay witness.

It’s fresh. _She’s_ fresh. Downstream still runs red, drawing from the cloud that’s pooling around her severed waist. The lower half of her body is nowhere to be seen, but Mark gets a good idea of where it might’ve gone from the long strings of viscera hanging on riverstones and the prominent streaks in the dirt on the opposite shore.

He looks more carefully, and though missing an eye, with drooling flesh hanging in sheets off her skull, her face seems familiar. He’s seen her before, or, at the very least, someone like her. Close to him, though he can’t place a finger on exactly how close.

She’s been gored, he realizes, drawing ever close like a moth to flame. He squats, stares for a moment, then looks about until he spots a twig by his foot, flimsy but enough. He plucks it from its bed of sand and uses the end to hook underneath a scrap of what’s left of the woman’s clothes, murmuring a soft apology as he moves the ruined fabric aside to better look at her wounds.

It didn’t kill her. Such can be blamed on other injuries, plus the holes carved out between her ribs look old, brown and crusted around the edges. But certainly, at some point, she was gored. Perhaps mounted, presented, to make it easier for her killer to feast.

Through the chasm in her abdomen, he can see that her lungs are missing, likely torn from her chest while she struggled to breathe. Her entrails went next, some still strewn like eels in the water. Then the liver, then the kidneys, then whatever else flesh and fat remained, like a pumpkin hollowed by clumsy hands.

Her heart was last. He always saves it for last.

"For you."

Mark stands so fast that the trees blur around him. He spins tight on his heels just in time to meet the unwavering headlights of the Wendigo’s gaze, the beast already stood only an eerily short distance away, having crept up on him like the night itself.

Johnny, caught mid-step, pauses and lowers his foot back to the dirt. With it, he unceremoniously drops a lump of meat and muscle, and Mark hardly flinches at the _something_ that splatters over his toes when the woman’s heart hits the earth. It’s warm, he doesn’t need to look.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” he says dryly, and the beast cocks his head. Not quite curious, but in some way that unsettles Mark deep down in his gut. He can’t put a finger on the wariness, nor the emotion behind those glowing eyes, so he distracts himself from both, tossing a glance back towards the woman. “Who is she?”

“You tell me,” Johnny answers, helpful as ever. His voice is tinged with an otherworldliness, the slightest echo of a growling undertone that betrays his barely contained form, what he really is under all that skin and charm.

Some nights, he’s naked and covered in blood, so much it’s like he bathed with his victim’s corpse. Soaked in the remnants of their life. Reveled in the fragility of it all.

Other nights, like tonight, he’s dressed clean, a white button-up under a stylish Parisian blazer, pinstripe with slacks to match, only his feet left bare to the earth. There’s merely the tiniest smattering of blood on his collar, rust against snow, the only other evidence of his night’s mess blended into the shadows of his black antlers and hair, visible only when close enough to touch.

His face is always clean until Mark smears it with his sins. His hands always spotless until they lay upon Mark's body. His form neatly manicured and kept until the heat of Mark’s living self melts it from his crafted bones, like wax from a candle, sloughing off to reveal all those teeth and talons.

Mark eyes him for a long while before returning his attention only partly to the half a woman lying just a foot away.

“She’s in her early 20s,” he starts, observing her in the perfect stillness only death supplies, his mind working to reconstruct how she must’ve looked before her final moments.

“Long brown hair.” Matted close to her head with blood in some places and torn completely from her scalp in others. Apparently taking chunks with it. Ivory skull peeks here and there, gleaming wet under the moonlight.

“Green eyes.” One stares back, color hardly distinguishable through the empty glassiness of death. The other is nowhere to be seen, and, frankly, Mark’s not too keen on finding out where it might’ve gone.

“A soft face, freckles.” Torn apart, mauled by gnarled claws. Some tiny spots still kiss across the highest parts of her cheeks, but most of the skin has been peeled from the bone in a bloodied mess, likely partially from whenever her jaw was ripped from its hinges. “Plain, but pretty.”

He turns, trusting enough to put his side to the Wendigo, but still acutely aware of those eyes cast upon him. It feels like Johnny’s waiting for something, expectant but not tense. Just _waiting._

“Based on her clothes, she was probably working class, or certainly dressed like it,” he says, staring at the blood-soaked rags stuck to her body and lying in shreds around her. As soon as the words are out of his mouth though, he second-guesses himself, because he isn’t quite sure where they came from. He looks to Johnny, to those staring floodlights. “Do you think that’s a leap too far?”

“You talk like you know her,” Johnny answers.

“I think I do,” Mark replies honestly, uncertainly. “ _Did._ ”

He looks down at the woman’s face again, this time with a new appreciation, truly taking in her features and wracking his brain to remember, remember, _remember._ He draws a breath and lifts his gaze to Johnny once more.

“Don’t- Didn’t I?”

“You do now, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

Mark falls quiet.

“How did she die?”

He takes a deep breath and exhales on a sharp sigh when he tastes rust quickly settling heavy and bitter on his tongue. “I- I can’t say. Do you know how hard it is to figure that stuff without-”

“Guess,” and Johnny’s voice is closer, just a dangerous tad, yet Mark can’t bring himself to look.

“I’d say blood loss,” he forces the words out, gaze drifting towards the red still polluting the stream’s once crystalline water. “Or shock. Probably when she was- when she was ripped.”

“Being mounted didn’t kill her.”

“No,” Mark says, and he can’t tell if he’s agreeing or answering. “No, being mounted definitely didn’t kill her. It might’ve- It might’ve hurt the meat, but it wasn’t enough to end her life.”

“She was mounted.” He’s closer again. “But she wasn’t bled.”

“No,” he whispers on a breath, and he can feel the _something_ dripping off the shadow looming behind him, each drop wetting his shoulder and stinging his nose with its iron stench, “she wasn't. She was slaughtered, but not bled, so it- it was messy.”

The fabric of Johnny's sleeve feels soft under his fingers as he gently catches the Wendigo's arm winding around his waist. It's clean, but that warmth still drip-drip-drips on his shoulder. But he will not look.

"Why was she mounted?" the beast's voice is little more than a low purr, like the hum of the midnight earth in pure silence, his lips brushing the short hairs on the back of Mark's head. Again, danger tickles his spine.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he whispers back.

“Tell me anyway.”

“Why?” he asks, and he holds Johnny’s arm so tight his nails bite the beast’s skin through his sleeve. And yet the thing still does not waver, holding him ever tighter, ever closer against the warm expanse of his chest, as if he’s trying to consume him whole. Mark briefly fears he just might, but that unease doesn’t stop him from mouthing off, “So you can relive that moment again? For your own sick pleasure?”

Johnny’s lips smile where they’re ghosting beneath his ear. “You still think this is for me.”

A horrible heat rushes downwards through Mark’s body, and, at last, he tears from Johnny’s arms to whip around and face his shame. And his shame stares back, a steady, unbearable warmth that holds his hips and gazes into his eyes and has the damn nerve to crack another beautiful smile as he whispers, “Who else would it be for?”

The single word “fool” tastes like sweet iron murmured into his lips as Johnny finally kisses him, deep and searing hot. Those big hands wrapped around his hips are so grounding it feels like he might bore through the earth itself, as if Johnny might drag him down into whatever crevasse from which he emerged, perhaps to devour him just as he did that poor waitress and those who came before.

It almost hurts, the fear burning like a metal brand sinking into his guts.

And yet, despite the horror that seeps to the bone and leaks from the flesh, he moans with unbridled desperation as Johnny pulls him closer still.

He kisses the teeth that bare in a grin against his mouth, going with ease as Johnny pulls him to sink to the ground. Earth scent fills his nose as he lies back in the mud, and he feels it all vibrate under his body as the forest begins to sing its praises at the sight of the Wendigo feasting again.

Johnny is heavy and hot on top of him, lips gentle but starved as he trails open-mouth kisses down Mark’s throat. He laves a warm tongue over Mark’s apple, and he whines at the teasing teeth that follow, his hands shooting up to wrap around thorny antlers.

His palms feel sickly wet as he holds onto those midnight branches like his life depends on it, but he doesn’t think about it. He can’t, not now, not with those steady hands unbuttoning his shirt or with the mouth that chases them down. Johnny won’t allow him a moment to think, but he doesn’t even try to take one anyway.

He indulges in this moment and every one that follows. He allows himself this much, and Johnny gives him whatever he so desires, lavishing his body as though devoted to his every whim.

Mark knows what lies beneath, he can feel it peeking through as Johnny’s eyes, brightly aglow with the glare of the ravenous moon, peer up at him from between his thighs.

But he doesn’t think about it.

“Oh-” he gasps as Johnny at last breaches his body, his thighs hiked around the beast’s hips and his fingers curled in fists tight around thick clods of mud, his desperate nails leaving deep scars in the earth, “Oh, fuck-”

It should hurt worse than it does, but Johnny’s saliva as he licks into Mark’s mouth is like a drug, numbing him to the world. Or maybe it’s just his tongue, hypnotizing in the way it counts his teeth and the soft ridges of his palate. He can’t get enough, and Johnny groans at his hunger like he can taste it.

He whispers Mark’s name as he fucks him into the mud, and Mark grabs wherever he can; his antlers, his hair, his shoulders, dirtying it all with the blood and earth clinging to his hands. He holds on tight to Johnny as the beast gorges on his flesh and skin and heat, and over his shoulder, the moon watches, staring at the scene with a glare that echoes the shameful gleam in the dead woman’s eye.

Mark meets her gaze, and his stomach twists, but then Johnny is pulling him right back in, tearing him through the barrier of sanity and over the edge, and then he’s plummeting just as fast and hard as the wailing of the trees and the purring of their roots. He feels the earth shake, as he throws his head back, and the mud mats his hair, eager to swallow him up. Overcome with the song and the screams of the wind and of those who’ve passed exactly where he lays, he cries the Wendigo’s name like a prayer to the silver cross that hangs around his neck, and then -

Morning sunshine greets him when he opens his eyes, and he stares, dazed, off into the curtain of the forest, into the shadows that leer back from behind that wall of tree trunks.

Realization hits him, and he gasps like he’s never taken a breath in his life. The dewy air flooding his lungs knocks him off his feet, and he falls backwards onto his front porch, the wooden boards rattling and creaking under his sudden dropping weight.

Splinters bite the heels of his palms and the soles of his bare feet as he scrambles backwards across the porch, only stopping when his back hits the front door of his home, his wide eyes never leaving the wood that stares back. He doesn’t know for that brief moment who he is or where he is, but none of that matters now, not when he can still feel a dead woman’s unseeing eye watching his panic, just as she did his pleasure mere moments ago.

The wind blows, and he sucks it deep into his lungs. It doesn’t whistle to him now, the song gone from the breeze’s tone, and that fact calms him. The forest is still alive, creeping on the edge of his property, but it no longer calls to him.

He’s awake.

And his phone is ringing.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath and clambers to his feet to hurry inside on weak, still trembling legs.

He doesn’t even take the short moment necessary to wipe the mud from his feet on the welcome mat, forgoing such to instead track the mess across his living room with the self promise that he’ll clean it up later. He knows he won’t, not until he gets back home at the very least, but he tells himself anyway that he will.

His shirt is soaked through with the sickly sweat that night terrors bring, the thin fabric suffocating his body. He can already feel his skin beginning to chill and clam, and where he may not have as much care for his floor, he certainly frets for his own health, so as he crosses the room in a few quick strides, he tears the shirt off over his head and tosses it aside, promising that he’ll clean that up too.

The phone rings a beat longer than normal, and he reaches it at what would surely be the last possible second, picking the receiver up and holding it to his ear. Without pause, he greets the caller in a voice that sounds nearly too rough to be his own, raspy with possibly a coming cold or lack of use, “H-Hello?”

“Good morning, Mark.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed :D
> 
> i meant to post a dark monsterfucking fic for halloween last year but never got around to it, so with how my writings improved recently and how ive gained the confidence that i can indeed write to the bone as i want to, i thought id kill two birds with one stone and tackle my year old goal and also kick off this universe!!
> 
> its been a long time since ive written horror, especially one with such a dreamy tone,, i hope this is okay ;; (also i hope i didnt go too dark?? i hope i didnt scare anyone off :') pls dont look at me differently)
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/longerassride) || [cc](https://curiouscat.me/catsbyy)


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